


Devotion and Delivery

by Nia_dAstarte



Category: Green Book
Genre: Food Porn, Freeform, Gap Filler, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, M/M, What Really Happened After They Talked About The 'Complicated World' and Then Got Drunk Together, finding each other, hunger, joy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 14:52:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17768855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nia_dAstarte/pseuds/Nia_dAstarte
Summary: Tony Lip’s a man who’s always hungry. He hasn’t met many people like him, who are always as hungry as he is. Food, sure, hot dogs and spaghetti all’arrabiata and the sausages and cakes from the deli down the street.But it’s not just food. Tony’s hungry for it all.Or the one where Tony Lip did not want this to be the exception.





	Devotion and Delivery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smallscreensidekick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallscreensidekick/gifts).



> I admire this film, and especially the two breathtaking performances of the leading men, from the very first second to the last. Thank you to [smallscreensidekick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallscreensidekick/pseuds/smallscreensidekick) for encouraging me to write this, and for gifting me the title. This is for you, E!

0.  


Tony Lip’s a man who’s always hungry. He hasn’t met many people like him, who are always as hungry as he is. Food, sure, hot dogs and spaghetti all’arrabiata and the sausages and cakes from the deli down the street.

But it’s not just food. Tony’s hungry for it all. The large noises of the Bronx during the day and its soft silence by night, the lights of the cinema flashing across the street and the lights so yellow and warm in their flat, the feeling of his knuckles bursting into a cheekbone or his fingers on Dee’s belly, right where the scar sits where they’d had to get out little Frankie. He’s devoted to it all.  


Tony’s always hungry.

1.

 

He likes him in that suit.

Tony Lip likes suits in general, but rarely the men who wear them. They’re usually fat, not fat like him because they’ve got too little sometimes, but because they’ve got too much. So he likes suits, one of the reasons he likes working at the Copa, it’s a nice outfit, the read and the black flaps and the tails.  


The Doc isn’t fat. His fingers are long and thin, his suit tailored to suit his slim waist, his thin wrists, his long legs. He looks like he’s so carefully put together, that he’s had to assemble himself from a heap of rags and slights and insecurities, and that nothing but putting himself together carefully would do.

Like he might fall apart the moment you loosen his tie.

So, yes, Tony’s thought about loosening his tie. Maybe he wants the Doc to come apart. Maybe he wants it to be him who does it, with his arms that are so much wider and his mouth that is so much dirtier and a gentle stroke of the knuckles on the back of his hands down the Doc’s throat.

He’s worked night clubs in New York all his life. He knows the world’s a little more complicated than they tell you, and he’s hungry for it all.

 

2.

 

And then he sees him naked, too. It’s not good. It’s humiliating for the Doc, and that other guy who’s cowering like that. And it makes Tony angry, because he wants to see the Doc naked, but not like this. Never like this.

And it makes him even angrier that, in spite of it all, he’s still hungry, even right there, right then. Even seeing them crouch like that in handcuffs under the gaze of those smug bastards, he’ll be hungry for him and hungry for the danger and pleased with himself for getting them out with nothing but his quick mouth. It’s his job to deliver Doctor Don Shirley, after all.

That’s why Tony’s angry when they walk back to the car. And maybe he’s a little jealous, too. Maybe that’s what that sudden starving feeling is, that starving in his heart, making it pound against his ribcage and roar in his ears. He’s not a jealous guy, Tony Lip, couldn’t be, not since he’s grown fat and ugly while Dee stayed slim and beautiful, but Dio mio, he’s jealous now. Because he’d have thought that the Doc might, you know, make a move on someone who was a bit safer than a stranger in a fucking YMCA in the Deep fucking South. _I thought you would want this to be the exception,_ my ass. Tony’s starving.

 

3.

 

Tony looks into the mirror that night. He’d like to stay angry, but as he looks at himself, he’s sad. Working every fucking day to put food on the table, and that’s what it’s done to his body. It’s used it all up, his face broad, his muscles swollen, his skin coarse and calloused. Is this what being hungry does to you? 

The Doc’s hungry too, Tony can tell. But he won’t let it out. He won’t let himself come apart. Maybe he looks so beautiful, on stage at his Stainway or clinging pissed to Tony’s arm, because he won’t let himself give in.

And maybe it’s better this way, really.

 

4.

 

Who gives a fuck what’s better, though?

Not the man who eats Kentucky Fried Chicken by the bucket.

 

5.

 

They’re sitting in the hotel lobby, and Tony asks the Doc about where he learned how to play the piano. They talk about where Tony learned to bullshit and about their mothers. Tony tells the Doc about his father, and the Doc tells Tony about his granddad. And then they go upstairs together, and now it’s time to say goodnight, standing in front of Tony’s hotel room.

The Doc looks at Tony, looks him up and down. His eyes linger on Tony’s upper arms, and his eyes, and his grin. 

Good to know, Tony thinks.

“Good night, Tony,” is all the Doc says though, catching himself staring and trying to cover it up with the same smile he uses to cover up the insult of a fried chicken dinner.

There’s something pounding in Tony’s chest when he sees that smile. He’s starving. Even for that smile, and if that’s what he’s come to, he might as well admit that this may be a thing he’ll be hungry for all his life. 

So he says: “Doesn’t have to be.”

The Doc furrows his brow, in that confused way of his. As if Tony is showing him another bit of Kentucky Fried Chicken for the first time. Something he likes, but that he doesn’t understand. “Excuse me?”

“Look, Doc,” Tony says. “You wanna come in or not?”

“For another drink, you mean?”

Tony takes a step towards the other man. He looks into the Doc’s face. This is the moment. The moment where you don’t know if you’ll be hit in the face or pushed back against the wall, but in a good way. With nimble fingers, he loosens the other man’s cravat.

The Doc’s pupils dilate. 

Tony’s back to grinning. 

And then the Doc’s grinning, too.

 

0\. 

His hands glide over Don’s bare skin, up his thigh, along his waist. Don shivers when Tony’s callouses scratch across a sensitive spot, the curve of his thigh, his ribs, the bottom of his throat.

He moans when he feels it on his lips. When Don sucks a finger between his lips, Tony presses his face into the man’s throat, his back arching, and bites down just below his jaw. Don moans again.

Tony wants to drink up those sounds. He wants to fill the night with them, like the Doc fills entire music halls with sounds and songs and cheering people. That’s what Don’s devoted to, those people and his music and the songs. They’re always hungry, the two of them. 

And Tony really didn’t want this to be exception.

**Author's Note:**

> I could blame Tony and pretend all typos and spelling mistakes were on purpose. I won't have to, since Don kindle removed them for me. Thank you, Don! And while we are at it: **Congratulations to all the cast and crew who won this film the Academy Award for Best Picture!** Like it was said during the acceptance speech: "We made this film with love, and we made it with respect." That is, in my humble opinion, the only way to make art.


End file.
